Groupon's Indian website was recently brought down by onions. According to Al Jazeera America, the daily deals site offered a discount on onions, one of the country's most popular and important food items, in an attempt to gain consumer attention. But the price cut on Groupon offered was so good that it resulted in a flood of traffic that temporally overloaded the company's servers, crashing the site.
Groupon was selling onions at a price of 9 rupees per kilogram, which equates to about 15 cents for 2.2 pounds worth. Al Jazeera says that onions have skyrocketed in price AN ONION FRENZY SPARKED BY A SOURED ECONOMYacross India recently, selling for as much as 100 rupees per kilogram. The news site reports that Groupon sold 3,000 kilograms, or about 6,613 pounds of onions, in 44 minutes. More than 8,000 kilograms were purchased by 17,065 users (who were restricted to buying 1 kilogram each) before Groupon sold out last week.
Demand for discounted onions crashes Groupon's Indian website | The Verge